I am a rising 2L transfer student at GW Law (Waitlisted at GULC) and want to share the things I learned my 1L year that no one will tell you. I put these tips in a video, if you have any questions please feel free to email me; I would love to help in any way I can! Good Luck!

Pretty solid. At UVA, this would have been a great approach for about 50-75% of my first year classes. Throwing away my textbooks would have been a terrible idea in a few class, also more substantial outlines were also necessary for some non-issue spotter type exams. Overall, however, this is similar to what I did and it worked very well for me. The only thing to add is that you need to tailor your method to your professor entirely, so your prep for any two classes will never be identical.

Last edited by Law Sauce on Wed Aug 01, 2012 1:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Am I trying to sell you something? Yes and No. I already have a room booked/ people attending my seminar this Saturday. It would not be realistic to get someone to pay, travel, book arrangements and attend in 4 days. The reason I am posting this is to set up a name for myself and gain momentum to do future seminars next year. However, I believe in my method and would love to help anyone/everyone who is interested to succeed in their 1L year to gain some sort of "goodwill" in the industry. I paid $300 for a private tutor and he taught me things that were potentially worth $100's of thousands of dollars over the span of my first 10 years of practice- all from my 1st year grades! I don't charge at all for any emails/ questions any incoming student might have. Take my advice or leave it. I wish all 1L students success and if I can aid in that, I'm here.

Pretty solid. At UVA, this would have been a great approach for about 50-75% of my first year classes. Throwing away my textbooks would have been a terrible idea in a few class, also more substantial outlines were also necessary for some non-issue spotter type exams. Overall, however, this is similar to what I did and it worked very well for me. The only thing to add is that you need to tailor your method to your professor entirely, so your prep for any two classes will never be identical.

Thank you for your input, I appreciate your honesty. I 100% agree with you about tailoring your study habits to each individual professor- I plan to go over that more in depth on Saturday, but apparently I was not effective at relaying that tidbit in my video. I do have a few questions for you if you have time:

(1) What would be the advantage of reading cases over and above the casebriefs online and all that is discussed about them in lectures?(2) non-issue spotter exams? I apologize for my ignorance, but could you explain more about these and how a commercial outline would help more than just knowing 100% of what the professor goes over in lecture?

I want to applaud you for going to a school like UVA, great work! I went to a tier 4 school in Southern California and I might have had to employ other methods to succeed at a school such as UVA- although without having gone there I'm not sure. Thanks for your time!!

To add credibility to my method, as I came from a tier 4 school. I am not trying to say you cannot succeed in law school with any other method, I am simply adding my two cents about which method worked for me and how others can employ that same method.

Ludicrous speed - GO! This, like most of OP's suggestions, is overkill, but it's the right basic formula. I kept my books (but didn't brief, ever), never practiced typing (although I'm naturally pretty quick), didn't look at practice tests until about half way through the semester (though OP is probably right about this), and usually didn't take practice tests until 2-3 weeks left in the semester. I did outline every week, but didn't do a "class outline."

However, I don't share OP's distaste for certain supplements. E&Es are usually pretty good way to test yourself on an ongoing basis, and horn books are great for the type of teacher's that like to "follow the book." I think probably for the first 2/3 of the semester, you are better of immersing yourself in the law using supplements than taking practice tests, because the supplements often help with nuances you may or may not pick up in class, and practice tests are often a limited resource best saved until you can get the most out of them.

I am a rising 2L transfer student at GW Law (Waitlisted at GULC) and want to share the things I learned my 1L year that no one will tell you. I put these tips in a video, if you have any questions please feel free to email me; I would love to help in any way I can! Good Luck!

(2) non-issue spotter exams? I apologize for my ignorance, but could you explain more about these and how a commercial outline would help more than just knowing 100% of what the professor goes over in lecture?

For one, the kind where you are presented with facts that don't mirror anything you've really done before, so you need to use policy and theory chops to cobble together a prediction about what the law might be.

Ludicrous speed - GO! This, like most of OP's suggestions, is overkill, but it's the right basic formula. I kept my books (but didn't brief, ever), never practiced typing (although I'm naturally pretty quick), didn't look at practice tests until about half way through the semester (though OP is probably right about this), and usually didn't take practice tests until 2-3 weeks left in the semester. I did outline every week, but didn't do a "class outline."

However, I don't share OP's distaste for certain supplements. E&Es are usually pretty good way to test yourself on an ongoing basis, and horn books are great for the type of teacher's that like to "follow the book." I think probably for the first 2/3 of the semester, you are better of immersing yourself in the law using supplements than taking practice tests, because the supplements often help with nuances you may or may not pick up in class, and practice tests are often a limited resource best saved until you can get the most out of them.

But, to each their own, I guess.

You sound like you have a great grasp for the overall picture here. I completely agree with you about the E&E's for when you are not getting the big picture from the lectures- as this happened to me a few times. I appreciate your opinion about waiting for the practice tests... I do more practice tests as the term goes on, but I still like to get an idea of where the class is heading and where I'll need to eventually be at before I start the term.

120wpm: this should be a goal. I type between 100-105, and continue to work on it. Once you get over 80 or so, the typing speed becomes less of a concern and priority. This is mainly for handwriters and peckers.

You seriously have people paying you for this? Jesus, I have to start coming up with ideas to monetize the law school process if you can seriously get people to pay for this shit.

Its very valuable to incoming students, so why not make money on it. I applaud the guy.

DuckEUG2010 wrote:

Law Sauce wrote:

Pretty solid. At UVA, this would have been a great approach for about 50-75% of my first year classes. Throwing away my textbooks would have been a terrible idea in a few class, also more substantial outlines were also necessary for some non-issue spotter type exams. Overall, however, this is similar to what I did and it worked very well for me. The only thing to add is that you need to tailor your method to your professor entirely, so your prep for any two classes will never be identical.

Thank you for your input, I appreciate your honesty. I 100% agree with you about tailoring your study habits to each individual professor- I plan to go over that more in depth on Saturday, but apparently I was not effective at relaying that tidbit in my video. I do have a few questions for you if you have time:

(1) What would be the advantage of reading cases over and above the casebriefs online and all that is discussed about them in lectures?(2) non-issue spotter exams? I apologize for my ignorance, but could you explain more about these and how a commercial outline would help more than just knowing 100% of what the professor goes over in lecture?

I want to applaud you for going to a school like UVA, great work! I went to a tier 4 school in Southern California and I might have had to employ other methods to succeed at a school such as UVA- although without having gone there I'm not sure. Thanks for your time!!

To respond:

(1) What I meant was that for my civil procedure class for instance not reading some of the cases is not a huge problem, but you do have to know the facts and the factors that the Court considered and felt were important much better than a commercial, or all but the very best student outlines would provide. I did not read all the cases in Civ Pro (anyone who reads Pennoyer doesn't understand law school ), but I did go look back before the exam and try to get gems from them to use to analogize and distinguish from fact patterns that may appear on the exam. I also looked through the Hornbook (the big green one) to get other people's takes and get more "gems" from it to pull out on the exam. I got the highest grade in my class in Civ Pro btw, and I type about 45 wpm and am a normal, non-genius type guy. Even more to the point, my contracts class professor wanted us to cite cases for every issue and distinguish/analogize to the cases that we had read on that issue. You had to know the facts on the cases way better than an most outlines would give them to you. Reading, or at least knowing granular details of the cases were important to success in that class. Con Law also requires working with the cases yourself at least a little (I did not read all of the cases of course).

(2) Basically, I believe your method worked better for more traditional, issue spotter type exams. These are usually the ones with one or two long questions with a bunch of stuff happening. This is what I meant by issue spotter exams, you need to type fast and mention a lot of issues. At least for me here at UVA, I had about 3 or 4 of these type exams in my first year. My other exams did require some of the same skills but often had more questions (5 or 6) that required your to do specific analysis and go deeper than simply issue spot plus some brief analysis. This is why I called them non-issue spotter exams. You still have to issue spot, but most everyone spots a lot of the important issues, usually there is only 2 or 3 big ones per question, it is thorough and targeted analysis that gets you As. I also had one multiple choice type exam for federal income tax that was more like a complex math test than a traditional law school issue spotter. Cases were nearly irrelevant here, but a much more detailed outline was essential.

I like your method and I think that, while it is not really a new method, it is an underutilized one. But I think that it is a method that works best on traditional law school type issue spotter exams. I am probably generalizing, but I get the sense that at nont14s these type exams are by far the norm. In my experience, however, this is not the only exam I have faced.

(2) non-issue spotter exams? I apologize for my ignorance, but could you explain more about these and how a commercial outline would help more than just knowing 100% of what the professor goes over in lecture?

For one, the kind where you are presented with facts that don't mirror anything you've really done before, so you need to use policy and theory chops to cobble together a prediction about what the law might be.

I have heard of this, but never had to face it myself. I think word on the street is that for these questions, you just create hypothetical facts and then work with those as you would an issue spotter.

You seriously have people paying you for this? Jesus, I have to start coming up with ideas to monetize the law school process if you can seriously get people to pay for this shit.

Seriously, me and almost everyone else on this site have been giving this advice away for free.

Only cause we didn't think of a way to monetize it

I didn't think beating out kids with 140's on their lsat was a way to generate revenue as a law school advisor, but I thought wrong, time to write a book about networking.....ill call it "never grab coffee alone"